Owning and operating a successful business is the dream of many people. Being in full control to build your own business to develop your own work situation on your own terms can have a very strong appeal. Yet, many owners create their business that becomes a complicated, stress filled, overwhelming, lonely and unsuccessful process.

Many business owners think they know what it takes to run a successful business and are convinced they are fully prepared to jump in. This is rarely true. The fundamentals of owning and operating a business sometimes referred to as the "rules of the game" are rarely taught in the U.S. school system. (See Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, published by Babson College, and Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, July, 1999.)

We are led to believe that an education fully prepares us for running a business. In truth, the U.S. school system only prepares us to get a job, not create jobs. The fundamentals of successfully owning and operating a business are very different from getting and keeping a job. Unfortunately, most business owners are left to learn these fundamentals through the age-old process of "Trial and Error" with an emphasis on error. This "Trial and Error" dependence causes far too many serious and fatal errors, and leads to stress, financial damage, and eventual failure.

This year, over 800,000 of the approximately 2,000,000 start up businesses will fail! Nearly 1,000,000 of those remaining will fail within 3 years. Why do so many businesses fail? Many studies show that approximately 98% of all failures occur because of the owners. The other 2% are a result of acts of God.

Yet, the reverse is also very true. Approximately 98% of all businesses succeed because the owners are running their businesses to suit their own personal agenda, their personal vision and their personal conditions of success. In essence, as the owner grows and improves as a person, so grows the business. The owner is the head and his or her business is their body. If the owner is stressed out, confused, going in many different directions, overwhelmed, or overworked, then their business will follow suit and struggle accordingly. If the business owner has a clear vision, creates a business that fulfills his or her vision, performs the duties of the business he or she wants to perform and excels at completing, and engages the right people or support services to conduct the other needed duties because they enjoy performing them and because they also excel at completing them, then the business will succeed. All business owners are IN CHARGE. They have the right, the obligation, and the power to create their business on their own terms to allow themselves to shine and enjoy the trip, so the business will also excel as well. Yet, too many business owners try to follow the how to’s written by others and unfortunately taught in schools, and lose sight that it is their business to create and run their way.

Virtually all successful business owners appear to follow this formula.

They create a business that suits their own personal vision and purpose.
They take full control of creating their business
They know themselves exceedingly well, so they have a clear understanding of what they want accomplished and what parts they want to do and not want to do.
They cherish and take full responsibility for the success of their business
They create their business to allow them to perform the actions of the business they want.
They create their business so they will not have to perform the duties of the business they do not want to do.
They create their business to allow them to have more time and resources to enjoy and thrive in their personal and family lives at the same time.
They get help from the right person (Partner) to assist them to discover who they really are and to create the business on their own terms.

The successful business owners focus on discovering themselves first. This gives them the clarity and confidence to create their business their way. Owners, who try to create their business to meet the expectations of others, rarely succeed and if they do, they pay a tremendous price doing so.

The best way business owners can discover themselves, in a very private, very supportive, very clear, very stress free and judgment free manner is to engage a business coach. By engaging a business coach, owners bring an equal partner whose sole purpose is to assist the owner to create their business in their own personally discovered and defined form of success. Their business coach will assist them to stay on track with their personal vision and life priorities and desires, without being sidetracked down undesirable and costly paths. Owners who engage a business coach are no longer alone. They change their business to get out of their own way and to thrive by doing what they enjoy.

We have hundreds of success stories where owners have taken control of their businesses and discovered who they really are to create their very unique business on their terms to suddenly realize far greater successes by working much less time and with very little, if any, stress. These success stories have been especially true for women business owners, many of which are also mothers and wives, who finally decided to discover their own unique passions, talents, self imposed obstacles, beliefs and values, and priorities, and then create their business to allow them to operate on their own terms. They took charge and created their own special world to allow them to succeed at business their way and continue to enjoy and thrive as a mother and a wife.

On example is the young lady who created her own marketing support services company and followed the instruction of others by hiring three new sales people to generate new business. But the additional costs in money and time to train, support, encourage and direct the three new sales people drained the owner and the business, such that she had to consider closing the business. She hired a TCC coach and immediately discovered through coaching that she was producing over 80% of all the sales herself, that she really enjoyed sales and was superb at it and that she had been sacrificing herself and the business so the sales people might catch up. She immediately fired all three, had her secretary become her sales assistant to handle the dreaded paperwork and follow-ups. She freed herself up to focus on doing what she loved-selling, without feeling like she was stepping on any toes. She turned the business around so fast that she tripled her profitable sales in only four months and returned the company to a very profitable position, all the while she cut her work day down from 12 hours a day to less than six, giving her more time with her children and husband. She did it her way.

Another business owner was working 14-hour days six days a week to develop her personnel screening business. Yet, she was not only overwhelmed, but was wearing out, as the business floundered. It seemed the harder and longer she worked the more she fizzled and so did the business. Upon hiring a business coach, she discovered during her first session that she was spending over 6 hours a day actively leading and participating in all sorts of voluntary community affairs, because she was told by a consultant that doing so would attract business. But she neither like doing it and it brought her no business. So she stopped altogether, and immediately recaptured 36 hours a week to devote to what she wanted. Then she discovered through additional coaching that she enjoyed other aspects of the business that she had farmed off to others who were not producing. So she completely restructured her business to perform the specific duties she loved and to bring in the right people to do what she did not love, and gained over 3 more hours a day she had been wasting. She now has a thriving business and only works about 6 hours, five days a week, and she is having lots more fun.

If you are a business owner, male of female, and you want to take charge and truly succeed on your own terms, then you will want to consider hiring the right business coach for you.

The American Dream of owning and operating your own successful business is not only possible but very likely when you do it your way by hiring your own business coach to be sure you do.